After seeing Mike Coston's post about the case yesterday morning, I tracked down the Times of Oman story and didn't think much more about it. But Branswell's absolutely right: WHO reported the first case on October 31, and his death was reported on November 15. But WHO has no mention of the second case. On the FluTrackers list of cases, it's the most recent, and the same for Andrew Rambaut's list.

Unless this man arrived in hospital on December 30 and promptly died, it does seem odd that Oman would not have issued some announcement about it earlier than yesterday.

It may well be that Oman notified WHO sometime in the last week of December, when most WHO staff were likely off work. Or the Omanis may just not have got round to sending WHO an email. Either way, it looks sloppy.

After seeing Mike Coston's post about the case yesterday morning, I tracked down the Times of Oman story and didn't think much more about it. But Branswell's absolutely right: WHO reported the first case on October 31, and his death was reported on November 15. But WHO has no mention of the second case. On the FluTrackers list of cases, it's the most recent, and the same for Andrew Rambaut's list.

Unless this man arrived in hospital on December 30 and promptly died, it does seem odd that Oman would not have issued some announcement about it earlier than yesterday.

It may well be that Oman notified WHO sometime in the last week of December, when most WHO staff were likely off work. Or the Omanis may just not have got round to sending WHO an email. Either way, it looks sloppy.